I am an academic and writer based in the UK. I have always wondered why capitalism claims to know the price of everything but the costs of nothing, unless it gets in the way of increased profit. I have been puzzling over gender inequalities in the political economy of our global society for many years now. This is not only an academic interest but a personal one; the rich buy in the labour of others and the poor get depleted more and faster. I wonder what our world would feel like if this labour of life-making was equally distributed, and valued as it should be.
This is a great book for understanding the concept of social reproduction, the maintenance of life itself.
Many well-known and thoughtful authors have contributed chapters to this book, explaining different aspects of social reproduction–which can be understood as the production and maintenance of life itself–and the consequences of its unequal distribution.
I enjoyed reading this book, even though, at times, I felt that it needed to broaden its approach to social reproduction to include insights from how this work affects people in the Global South.
This groundbreaking collection explores the profound power of Social Reproduction Theory to deepen our understanding of everyday life under capitalism. While many Marxists tend to focus on the productive economy, this book focuses on issues such as child care, health care, education, family life and the roles of gender, race and sexuality, all of which are central to understanding the relationship between economic exploitation and social oppression.
In this book, leading writers such as Lise Vogel, Nancy Fraser, David McNally and Susan Ferguson reveal the ways in which daily and generational reproductive labour, found in households, schools, hospitals and prisons,…
A tour de force! This is an amazing book that takes a historical view to explain the story of women’s exclusion from public life and the physical and epistemic violence they experienced through the witch trials in Europe.
I would never have put these two elements together–bringing witch trials into view to help us understand the exclusion of women from the political economy of everyday life. This, Federici argues, led to the restructuring of household relations and the role of women in them, which in turn reflected the changing needs of society with the rise of capitalism.
I found this book illuminating and inspiring as it also tells us about the struggles of women against the shifts in their roles.
'A groundbreaking work . . . Federici has become a crucial figure for . . . a new generation of feminists' Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars Room
A cult classic since its publication in the early years of this century, Caliban and the Witch is Silvia Federici's history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages through the European witch-hunts, the rise of scientific rationalism and the colonisation of the Americas, it gives a panoramic account of the often horrific violence with which the unruly human material of pre-capitalist…
This book shook up the debate on domestic work and the place of women in society.
Da la Costa and James put forward the radical idea that the working class must include non-waged workers in the home, most of whom are women. This was a revolutionary idea which brought to light how the work of women is overlooked in society and the economy. Wages for housework were their symbolic and material answer to this, and this generated a huge debate about how the modern family was created by the development of capitalism, with the care labour of women being a subsidy to capital.
When I first read this book, I felt as if a whole new way of thinking about women’s work had been opened up.
A superb introduction to the prospect of opening our idea of the working class to include non-waged workers, specifically women who work in the home. A simple idea with profound revolutionary consequences. If the workers of the world are not all in the factory, and are not all men, where does that leave us?
I really learnt a lot from this book! It is an important contribution to the debates about women’s labour, accumulation of capital, and extraction of resources from the global south.
It traces the social origins of the sexual division of labour, which Mies called 'housewifization' (not my favourite word, but it captures something about the way in which the term housewife hides women’s labour!). Layering this with the history of colonialism and the new international division of labour, Mies is able to locate the history of capitalism not only in the roots of colonialism but also in the gendered division of labour–capitalist patriarchy.
This is now a classic in feminist political economy literature.
'It is my thesis that this general production of life, or subsistence production - mainly performed through the non-wage labour of women and other non-wage labourers as slaves, contract workers and peasants in the colonies - constitutes the perennial basis upon which "capitalist productive labour" can be built up and exploited.'
First published in 1986, Maria Mies's progressive book was hailed as a major paradigm shift for feminist theory, and it remains a major contribution to development theory and practice today.
Tracing the social origins of the sexual division of labour, it offers a history of the related processes of…
A friend gave me this book, and I couldn’t put it down. It is Bhowmick’s story–and that of her mother, who was a working mother and exhausted by managing both her professional work and homemaking.
Building on this, Bhowmick maps the lives of middle-class Indian women labouring under this double burden and yet giving hope to their daughters about the promise of the possibility of "having it all"–a fulfilling home life (despite the unequal burden of housework) and an ambitious professional life.
The tone of the book is angry as Bhowmick, a journalist, conveys her frustrations with the patriarchal social order that refuses to see the depleting effects of gendered inequalities in both the public and the private spheres of life for middle-class women in India.
Savitribai Phule, Mahasweta Devi, Amrita Pritam, Medha Patkar, Kamla Bhasin, and countless others have, since the nineteenth century, fought for and won equal rights for Indian women in a variety of areas-universal suffrage, inheritance and property rights, equal remuneration, prevention of sexual harassment at the workplace, and others. Pioneering feminists believed that due to these hard-won rights, their daughters and granddaughters would have the opportunity to have rewarding careers, participate in the social and political growth of the country, gain economic independence, and become equal partners in their marriages. On paper, it would appear that the lot of Indian women…
The exploitation of this work of life-giving and maintenance depletes lives and generates crises of care that threaten not just livelihoods but lives. Depletion intensifies with environmental damage; life-making becomes more difficult. The denial of this work is institutionalised through our methodologies of accounting for work, through our ideological positioning of domestic work, and through cultural and social gendered norms.
I argue that we must stop taking this work for granted as given, always available, and costless, and only mitigated through further exploitation of people and planet if our vision of a "good life" is to include all, rather than a few.
I’ve become passionate about telling parents how to raise happy, resilient, creative, confident, entrepreneurial children who are doing something that gives them joy. So many young people are unhappy; parents don’t understand how to help. They think their children should follow their path, but that no longer works for many. For the last 10 years, I’ve been speaking to parent groups; I was an Advisor to EQ Generation, an after-school program that gives children the skills to succeed; on the Advisory Board of MUSE School, preparing young people with passion-based learning; and on the Board of Spark the Journey, mentoring low-income high school students to achieve college and career success.
This book shakes longstanding assumptions of parenting.
Through 99 stories of people who are now changing the world, it shows how to raise creative, confident, resilient children who are filled with joy and purpose. Based on interviews with top entrepreneurs and their parents, it guides you to help your children identify their passion and figure out how they can spend their professional lives doing something they love.
Parents' well-intentioned efforts often boomerang. By ignoring their children’s skills and interests, parents can inadvertently create pressure and anxiety, thwarting their children's ability to excel and find happiness. Too often, following your heart…
Raising an Entrepreneur: How to Help Your Children Achieve Their Dreams - 99 Stories from Families Who Did
Learn how successful entrepreneurs were raised! Could your children start a company that disrupts existing industries? Or a non-profit that helps people around the world? Or follow their passion as an artist or activist? And most important, lead a life of joy and purpose, to be happy and fulfilled? Margot Machol Bisnow, mother of two thriving entrepreneurs, reveals how to raise creative, confident, resilient, fearless kids who achieve their dreams, through 99 stories of families who did it.
Read stories from 70 families who raised true game changers. See family photos of these thriving entrepreneurs, both when they were young…
